Gov. Andrew Cuomo slapped down reports in the Buffalo News and Daily News that there might be a special legislative session — next week! — to deal with gun control laws, saying in a radio interview Thursday morning that “the only thing that’s going to happen in the next few days is Christmas.”

Cuomo acknowledged he has begun having “conversations” with legislators about ways to tighten New York’s gun laws, but that since this issue has not been robustly debated in recent months, he doesn’t have a firm sense of where they stand — or could be made to stand — on the issues.

He said he would address the issue in his State of the State presentation next month.

“We’re spending some time having discussions, because many of the other issues we’re doing in the State of the State, we’ve already talked about … I know the landscape, if you will, on many of the other issues,” Cuomo said on WGDJ Talk 1300 AM. “I want to have the conversations … The devil’s in the details here, and we haven’t gotten near that conversation.”

Cuomo said that he owns a shotgun, which I was not aware of. But the governor questioned why anyone would need semiautomatic rifles with high-capacity magazines.

“I don’t think legitimate sportsmen are going to say, I need an assault weapon to go hunting,” Cuomo said. “All right. So now we have some people, a small percentage of people, who like to use an assault weapon to target shoot … that’s on one end of the balance beam. On the other end of the balance beam is loss of life because of people who then have access to these type of weapon.”

Cuomo said the state’s current assault weapons ban “has more holes than Swiss cheese.” Daily News columnist Bill Hammond has a good outline of some of the law’s deficiencies in his weekly column.

The governor also addressed other issues:

— He said a move by Republicans in the U.S. Senate to advance a smaller funding package of Sandy relief was wrong for New York, and that, “My guess is sanity will rule at the end of the day, even for them.”

— Cuomo said it was premature to count out Duanesburg Democrat Cecilia Tkaczyk’s chances in winning a state Senate seat, although a Montgomery County judge certified Republican Assemblyman George Amedore as the winner. If that holds, Cuomo said, it could rapidly make moot all debates over the GOP-led coalition that is now set to assume power in the chamber.

“If Amedore actually wins, then the problem with the Senate Democrats is a mathematics issue,” Cuomo said. “If Amedore wins, none of the consternation and all of the chatter amounts to anything.”

— The governor had harsh words for people like Albany Medical Center CEO James Barba who suggested the Capital Region received the least amount of economic development money because of past funding allocations.

“It’s a competition … it’s not a grant, so there are winners and there are losers,” Cuomo said. “And losers can either say, you know, it was a conspiracy, to use your word, or they can say, ‘How can I do better so I can win next year?’ “

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